I Am Your Moony, Padfoot
by myfoodisnotshared
Summary: 'You asked me to marry you once, when we were sixteen. You kissed a trail to my ear and whispered the words with that total seriousness I never quite trusted; and you asked it so simply.' Written for the Birthday Bash Exchange on HPFC - Wolfstar


**Challenge: Birthday Bash Exchange for my secret giftee!**

**Disclaimer: HP belongs to J.K. Rowling. If this comes to a shock to you, I am worried.**

**Beta'ed by the exceptionally awesome whysosiriusumbridge. Thanks doesn't quite express how grateful I am:)**

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You asked me to marry you once, when we were sixteen. You kissed a trail to my ear and whispered the words with that total seriousness I never quite trusted; and you asked it so simply. _Moony, will you marry me?_

I laughed; of course I did, and pushed you off. _What, tonight? Never thought you'd be choosing the holy chains over… other activities, _I'd said, straddling you, kissing you. You laughed and made some stupid innuendo that was somehow hilarious coming from your mouth, and we brushed the moment away as just another of your antics. But I shouldn't have laughed, should I? I should have looked you in the eye and said _yes, marry me, I love you._

I never told you I loved you, not in so few and simple words. Of course you knew it and I knew you would give your life for me without a second's pause, but I never… I never took you by the hand and proved to you that you meant more to me than James or Peter or anyone else in this world. I didn't think I needed to, I thought we had years to build something of our tangled, heated, closeted relationship, to become a _couple_, to live together openly and settle down and be normal.

And I don't really know why we didn't. Because it was more than the war, wasn't it? It was more than- _sorry Moony, we'll catch up soon, I'm on patrol tonight, _and it was less than the _Padfoot, are you okay, I'm worried? _I used to parrot at you all the time. We were still lovers after we left Hogwarts, still passionate, and by Merlin you still made my head spin - but we weren't anything more. Lovers and best friends who never looked each other straight in the eye.

I would have thought you were unfaithful if you'd had any time to be, but we were all barely staying awake as it was and anyway, you would never have betrayed a mate, a friend. It kept us together, that, the fact that we were members of the same unbreakable gang, the Hogwarts quartet of pranks and practical jokes. If we'd been boyfriends you would have left me, but you couldn't when I was still so close to your adopted family, and I was too weak to break us apart.

When you asked me years later why I hadn't been there at your trial, why I'd left you in an Azkaban cell without once questioning your guilt, I told you half the truth - that I had been so distraught and out of control and _alone_ I had become a recluse for years, too broken to even consider trusting anyone again or trying for anyone. What I didn't tell you, what I never told anyone, was that for one godforsaken moment when they said you'd been arrested, I thought _thank Merlin it's over._

It was far from over, will never be over for me - but the thought scared me so much; I ran straight out of the door without asking for details. My best friends were dead, you were at fault for their deaths, you had killed poor, defenceless Peter yourself and to think of our relationship just seemed… so selfish. So I didn't, I closed my eyes and ears and for three long years wasted away in some murky log cabin, spending what little I had on cigarettes and cheap food I couldn't cook. But still, as hard as I tried not to be, I was in love with you.

After that, you know the story. I cleaned up my act when I ran out of cash and then found that I shouldn't have bothered, because no-one would employ a werewolf. I swallowed my pride and went to Dumbledore but even he could only find me temporary work - shop keeping, sorting, dull manual labour that I wasn't built for and couldn't cope with. I was homeless between jobs for a while, though my time in the muggle library was a gift - and only when the Defense post became available, did I see you again.

Did I ever describe to you the feeling of seeing Peter's name on the map, then yours; how James' words from so long ago - _don't be such a worry-wart Moony, the map is bloody infallible - _ echoed around my head? I was terrified, not just for James' child and his young friends, but for you, for myself. How could I live with myself, if I turned you in to the dementors - or had to duel you to protect Harry? I would have done anything to not be a feeling, sentient creature in that moment, because even as I told myself you were almost certainly the criminal I had been told you were, I _hoped_ \- I was burning with the hope that you were innocent.

Then, of course, I found Peter was truly alive and you - filthy, matted hair to your elbows, eager for the kill - were just as beautiful and perfect to me as on the first day you kissed me in a grubby bathroom against one of the walls. When I asked you, so calmly that I sounded tranquil if you had believed I was the spy, you just looked at me and said _forgive me, Remus._ And I did - I forgave you for every time you had teased me, every time you had doubted me, I forgave you for not loving me enough to believe in me. I didn't care if you were at fault for the whole wizarding war, because you were alive, and _I was in love with you._

The next time we saw each other was in Greece with you on the run, and I knocked on the door of your hotel room, the hotel room we once shared whilst on Order business. You opened the door, I stood there - and then kissed you as though I would never let you go again. Three days and two nights we spent in that room, rediscovering each other, though the fever needed no rekindling. One late evening with a still half moon lighting up the tangled sheets and our long discarded clothes, I kissed a trail to your ear, whispered to you with my most serious voice - _Padfoot, will you marry me?_

We couldn't marry whilst you were on the run, of course, though you wanted to. _It's not as though I'm a big fan of the Black name, let's just change it - I could be Sirius Yellow instead,_ you'd said, then you'd teased me about only being after your money. In the end, it was the argument that you could only have a big party if we could invite guests that won you round, though I think you might have made me promise to wear a wedding dress too. We kept it quiet, told no-one, and agreed that the last thing I needed was homophobia as well as lupophobia to deal with.

Eventually, of course, people found out. Poor little Hermione Granger, who rounded the corner when she was fifteen and squeaked and ran away when she saw me kissing you against a door, hand around your ass. She was wonderful about it, wasn't she, though? Telling us she thought any kind of love in this war was a good thing. As for Dumbledore, I had always suspected he knew, though you spat your tea all over the table when he asked when the wedding date would be. You looked like you'd been punched in the stomach, whilst I just laughed, and said as soon as I would be marrying a free man. Fred, the only person we ever told - you caught him looking at muggle gay porn, and knew instantly that he would need someone who understood him. Best thing you ever did for anyone, that, showing him how to make the 'literature' disappear unless the password was spoken.

Those were the good days, when I snuck up to your room and we held onto each other so tightly it almost hurt, but neither of us ever backed away. There were bad days too, but not like before - days when we were so close to each other's hopes and dreams and problems I felt like I was being squeezed into nothingness and pulled in a hundred directions all at the same time. Days when you snapped at me when you came out of a nightmare. Days where I yelled at you for being so damn grumpy all the time. And days that I'd rather forget, when the Order met and we sat around the Black family kitchen, discussing the ever increasing power of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, with bloody Snape making comments about how the cleaning was going.

When things got hard, we planned our wedding. _It will_, you declared one rainy afternoon as we lounged on your bed, _be the biggest and most brilliant wedding the Wizarding World has ever known._ I tried very hard to convince you otherwise, but no amount of pleading or reasoning or just plain exasperation would change your mind, and you assured me everyone on our side would be invited, and that Harry - willing or no - would be your best man. _I know he's not James, _you had said when I timidly brought up everyone's main fear, _even if I lose sight of that sometimes, I know it. But he's a part of our family, Moony, of course he's going to be a part of our wedding._

Then, in a single shattered moment, it happened. So much of that day is a blur, and I can better remember sipping my morning coffee than the manic fire message, the apparition to the Ministry, the hurtling down the stone corridor that led to Harry. You were before me in the charge though, I remember that, swinging open doors and then firing hexes as though you had never taken a fourteen year break from duelling. Bloody brilliant you were, and the most ferocious fighter I've ever seen.

I can't actually remember seeing you duel with Bellatrix. I just trusted you'd win - you always, always won, every fight you were ever in, even against me or James. One second you were casting, your voice a snarl that echoed across the chamber, the next Harry was screaming and diving for you and you were stumbling into the veil and- and-

I stopped Harry, I saved his life; I didn't let him plunge after you into the darkness. But even though I knew of the nature of the veil, even though I later poured over every text and they were all clear that souls do not return from between that stone arch - I blamed myself. It felt like a sacrifice. It felt like I let you go.

It still feels like I let you go.

I fell in love again, in time - just a year, how pathetic is that, over you in a year. Well, not over you, I never moved on or accepted your death but… I reinvented myself with Tonks. I became Remus Lupin, father of a son, not Moony the Marauder who was half engaged to a broken, beautiful man. When Hermione asked about us in the summer after your death, I told her that we had been in a friends-with-benefits relationship and hadn't told her because we thought she was too young. Fred never knew we'd been involved, but he gave me a look once as though he knew... I acted so surprised when he came out though, that he believed the lie and thought I was as straight as a ruler. You wouldn't have approved, but you weren't there, you were gone.

And you never believed in heaven, so I won't insult you by saying you went to a better place. I admit it - freely, gladly, because I never told anyone else - I wish you had come back as a ghost, for me. I tell myself it would have been a half life for you and madness for us as a couple, but still, my heart beats like a drum when I think of seeing you again. In the lonely nights before discovering I could just _stop being who I was,_ I used to lie in your bed and think of your heart beating by mine. And I would do that night after achingly long night, no matter how much it hurt, because it felt like you were here with me, your scent charmed to stay lingering in the sheets.

_The future is uncertain, the past is fixed,_ you said once, before we were more than fellow Gryffindors and trouble makers. You didn't need to tell me you lived in the present, because you were an explosion, a wrecking ball, fire and heat, dragon-hearted, always in action at some plot or joke or completely forbidden situation - you never could bear to look backwards or forwards. Every moment of your life excepting that decade wasted in a cell was a celebration of what it meant to be human, to be who you are without pretensions. To be honest and strong, no matter how difficult that was.

In the end I loved you truly, totally, with every single part of my soul, your lover and your brother-in-arms. There was no part of myself I didn't give to you, and there was little of me that didn't die with you.

I am your Moony, Padfoot. I always will be.

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**A/N: So… If I went to the Burrow and begged some treacle tart off of Mrs Weasley, would you give me a review in exchange for a slice? (And a review of your fic as well, of course.)**

**I absolutely, utterly recommend ****this forum** **by the way guys, come join us if you like seriously big challenges:P**


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